Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  I expected nothing less from the bull pen.

  I’d heard whispers about this place for years, and Fletcher had a file on it in his office, although I’d only skimmed the information. Still, I knew the gist of it. About this single cell hidden deep in the police station where the cops corralled particularly strong, sadistic, and troublesome prisoners, sicced them on each other late at night, and watched the resulting carnage for their own twisted amusement. From what I’d heard, the fight didn’t end, and the cops didn’t open the cell door, until at least one prisoner was dead.

  And tonight, they wanted that prisoner to be me.

  According to the rumors, most fights in the bull pen featured only two prisoners, not the five-on-one grudge match I was facing. But Dobson had obviously made some special arrangements for me, no doubt on Madeline’s orders. Still, as the rolls of bills kept going from one person to another, I couldn’t help but wonder how many folks were betting on me. Finn certainly would have, if he’d been here. But given the knowing smirks aimed in my direction, it didn’t seem that many people were willing to take a chance on me, not when I’d been so clearly marked for death. Their loss.

  Dobson moved through the crowd, shaking hands, slapping backs, and taking bets, just like the aw-shucks good ole boy that he portrayed himself to be. He was definitely the ringmaster of this little circus, and I wondered how long he’d been bringing prisoners back here just so he could watch them bleed out and pad his own pockets at the same time. Well, I hoped that he enjoyed the show because tonight was going to be the final performance, if I had my way.

  A clock mounted on the wall across from the cell told me that it was a few minutes until midnight. No doubt that’s when the action would officially get under way. So I used the remaining time to look beyond the cell and the cops, and I realized that people had also gathered on the second-floor balcony that overlooked the bull pen.

  Three people, to be exact—Madeline, Emery, and Jonah.

  Madeline relaxed in a padded seat behind the balcony railing, in the exact center of the room, directly across from the cell door, so that she could have the best view possible of my impending demise. Emery was seated at her right elbow, just like always, with Jonah standing a few feet away. All three of them were smiling with cold satisfaction, and a bottle of liquor was perched on the railing in front of them, as though they were going to toast my death. I wondered if they were going to smoke some cigars too.

  I stared up at Madeline, my gray eyes locking with her green ones. Her smile widened, and she gave me a cheery wave, as though I were a knight going into battle to earn the favor of some fair maiden, instead of a prisoner who was about to be beaten within an inch of her life before she was summarily executed. I wondered if Madeline would come down here and do the deed herself with her acid magic, or if she’d let Dobson open the cell door and put a couple of bullets through my skull.

  It didn’t much matter what she had planned—it wasn’t happening either way.

  So I dropped my gaze from Madeline and focused on the people who were the most important right now—the five prisoners locked in the cell with me.

  Two giants, two dwarves, and an elemental with a ball of Fire flickering in her hand. The giants were tall and wide, the dwarves short and stocky, and all four of them had thick, barrel chests and rock-hard muscles that bulged against the sleeves and legs of their gray jumpsuits. No doubt they’d augmented their natural strength by obsessively lifting weights, the way that so many prisoners did. Any one of them could easily beat or strangle me to death with his or her bare hands.

  I studied the elemental for several seconds, watching the ebb and flow of the orange-red flames coating her palm. She had a decent amount of juice, but she wasn’t in my league, and I could easily overcome her magic with my own Ice and Stone power. That’s probably what Dobson was counting on. Having the Fire elemental keep me busy blocking her scorching power, while the giants and dwarves surrounded me, hammering on me with their fists until they cracked through the protective shell of my Stone magic. Then nature would take its course, and my face, skull, and ribs would cave in from the heavy blows. Once I was down on the floor, it would all be over except for the screaming, and Dobson or even Madeline could enter the cell and kill me at leisure.

  My hands clenched into fists, my fingers pressing into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms. Not going to happen. None of it. Not tonight.

  Not to the Spider.

  Finally, all the bets had been placed, and all the money had been collected. Dobson bang-bang-banged his nightstick on the cell bars and let out a couple of loud whistles to get everyone’s attention. The crowd quieted, and folks sat down in the chairs around all three sides of the cell. The five prisoners inside the bull pen spread out in a single line in front of the door. I finally got to my feet, moved over in front of the toilets so that I was directly across from the prisoners, and stared them down, my face even colder and harder than all of theirs were combined.

  “Well, as y’all can see, we have a new, shall we say, challenger in our humble arena tonight,” Dobson crowed, his gravelly voice harsh with excitement.

  Hoots and hollers filled the air at his words, but I tuned out the roars and stared at my enemies, trying to gauge their strengths and weaknesses and, most important, how I could beat them all. While everyone was busy cheering, I put my hand on the marble wall above one of the toilets, making sure that my plan, my Ice magic, was still in place. Everything was as it should be, and I dropped my hand before anyone noticed what I was doing.

  Dobson droned on and on and on, psyching up the crowd for my death match. He really should have been a ringmaster the way he twirled his nightstick around and around in his hand like it was a baton. Apparently, the good captain thought that his prattle was supposed to scare me, because he finally wound down and peered through the bars at me.

  “Well, Blanco? Any last words? Any begging for your life you want to do?”

  “The only one who will be begging by the time this is over with is you, Dobson.” My voice was as cold as death. “You’d better hope that Madeline or Emery kill you before I get my hands on you. Otherwise, there won’t be enough left of you to slurp up with a straw.”

  Dobson’s brown eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond to my taunt. He thought that he’d already won. So did Madeline. But they hadn’t. Not by a long shot.

  “And now,” Dobson said, drawing out the words, “let the game begin!”

  All around the perimeter of the cell, people yelled and cheered and clapped and whistled. For a moment, it was almost like I was back in Southtown, facing down Beauregard Benson in the middle of the street, while that crowd of gangbangers, hookers, and bums looked on. But those folks had been more or less on my side. The only thing the people here were cheering for was my bloody, brutal death.

  Dobson dropped his hand, which must have been some sort of signal to the five prisoners inside the cell, because they all shouted and charged forward at once.

  Five on one. Not bad odds. I’d figured that Dobson would pack so many inmates into the bull pen that they’d tear me apart on sight and I wouldn’t even have a chance to fight back. But the giant had left me plenty of room to maneuver, a mistake that I planned to take full advantage of.

  For my family, I thought. For me.

  Then I screamed and charged forward as well.

  12

  Unlike the five folks coming at me, I had more of a plan in mind than just charging wildly at my enemy. When I’d built up enough speed, I dropped to my knees, sliding, sliding, sliding across the slick marble floor. Even as I zoomed forward, I reached for my magic, forming a thick, jagged dagger out of elemental Ice. I grinned. I always felt so much better with a knife in my hand.

  I slid right into the middle of the oncoming group of prisoners and lashed out, driving the Ice dagger deep into the side of one of the giant’s knees. She howled¸ her legs flying out from under her, and landed flat on her back. Her head cracked against
the floor, and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. But she was just stunned, not dead, and I wasn’t done with her yet.

  Even as the Fire elemental pulled up short and reared back to throw her ball of flames at me, I threw myself on top of the dazed giant, grabbed her shoulders, and then used my momentum to roll her heavy body over on top of me.

  The flames punched into her back a second later.

  The Fire elemental must have had orders to kill me as soon as she could because her first blast would have been plenty enough to do it, if I hadn’t been using the giant as a human shield. The giant screamed and screamed as the flames scorched through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit and then her skin beneath. Her blond hair went up in a puff of smoke, and the stench of burning, charred meat filled the room. I was dimly aware of the cheers, jeers, and shouts of everyone watching, but I ignored the sounds and focused on the only thing that mattered right now—surviving.

  I reached down and yanked the Ice dagger out of the giant’s knee, making her howl that much louder. Then I buried the crude blade in her neck, puncturing her carotid artery and putting her out of her misery.

  One down, four to go.

  Blood arched up from the giant’s wound, like water spewing from a fountain. The crowd hushed, and silence descended over the bull pen. They actually thought that I was already dead—until I wiggled out from underneath the giant’s body and got back up onto my feet.

  The Fire elemental let out an enraged shriek that she hadn’t toasted me to death, and she reached for her power again, forming another ball of flames in the palm of her hand.

  Viselike arms closed around me from behind, trapping my own arms down by my sides. The second giant had snuck up behind me, but that was okay, because I was going to use him just like I had the first one. With me seemingly pinned in place, one of the dwarves advanced on me, an evil grin stretching across her face. She held out her hand, and I saw the gleam of a shiv made out of a blue toothbrush handle that had been sharpened to a daggerlike point. So Dobson had outfitted at least one of the prisoners with a weapon, trying to give them that much more of an advantage. But really, he’d just made it that much easier for me to kill the dwarf, since I was going to bury that shiv in her throat.

  Instead of rushing forward, the dwarf kept the shiv close by her side. She wasn’t going to get suckered in as easily as the first giant had.

  “You got her?” the dwarf growled.

  I made a show of struggling against the giant, as if I were trying to break free of his rock-solid arms, even though I had no chance of doing that.

  “I’ve got her,” he growled back. “Hurry up and gut her already.”

  The dwarf grinned again and moved forward.

  I waited until the last possible moment, then, using the giant as leverage, I lifted my feet off the ground and kicked the dwarf in the face. One of my boots hit her dead-on in the nose, breaking it and making blood spatter everywhere. My other foot caught her in her right cheek, glancing off the thick bone there, although the tread of my boot imprinted itself deep into her skin, making her look like she had some sort of bizarre, red road rash.

  The dwarf yelped and clasped her hands to her face, more concerned with her busted nose than with me at the moment. As my feet fell, I used the downward arc to smash my right boot as hard as I could into the giant’s instep. He grunted, but he didn’t let go of me.

  The dwarf wiped enough of the blood out of her eyes to raise the shiv and lash out with it at me. I slammed my boot onto the giant’s instep again and again, and he finally wobbled, the tiniest bit off-balance. His arms loosened for a fraction of a second, and I let my legs slide out from under me, dropping to the floor like dead weight, and escaping his tight, bruising grip.

  The dwarf realized what I was up to, but it was too late, and she was too committed to her strike to stop. She plunged the toothbrush shiv into the center of the giant’s chest. She’d put all her strength behind the blow, punching the makeshift weapon right through his ribs and up into his chest cavity, where it had lots of vital things to hit, rupture, and tear through.

  The giant screamed and screamed, blood streaming down his chest in warm, coppery spurts. He staggered back, ripped the shiv out of his body, and tossed the weapon aside. But his actions only made the sucking chest wound that much worse, and he teetered back and forth on his feet for a few seconds before his knees buckled. He curled up into a ball on the floor, both hands pressed tight against his chest, trying to stop the blood loss, even though it was already far too late for that.

  Two down, three to go.

  The dwarf’s mouth gaped open, but I didn’t give her the chance to shake off her surprise. I scrambled over, snatched up the bloody shiv from where it had clattered to the floor, and threw myself at her.

  I went low, tackling her around the knees, since I was no match for her incredible upper-body strength. She’d been standing close to one of the cell walls, and I shoved her back far, fast, and hard enough to make her head smack up against the bars and rattle her brain around inside her skull.

  I was half on the floor, hanging on to the dwarf’s knees like a child clinging to her mother. The dwarf shook off her daze and put her arms on my shoulders, trying to push me off. Even as her fingers dug into my skin, I raised the bloody shiv and rammed it deep into the meaty part of her thigh, twisting and twisting and twisting the weapon in as deep as it would go, before ruthlessly yanking it back out again.

  The dwarf yelped with pain, so I stabbed her again, trying to hit her femoral artery so she’d bleed out. I wasn’t that lucky, but I’d put more than enough force behind the blow to make her feel it. The dwarf screamed, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. Her worn-out sneakers slipped in a pool of her own blood, and her legs went out from under her. The dwarf slid down the bars, until she was on the floor with me.

  I kept stabbing her the whole time.

  Punch-punch-punch-punch.

  Using the toothbrush shiv, I opened up wounds in her legs, chest, and arms. Whatever I could reach. I wasn’t picky. Then, when she was down at eye level with me, I drove the shiv so far into her throat that there wasn’t enough of the plastic sticking out for me to grab hold of and yank free again.

  The dwarf died with a wheeze, pitching to one side, her body scrape-scrape-scraping against the bars almost like she was rattling a tin cup back and forth asking for more food. A second later, she landed on the floor, choking to death on her own blood.

  Three down, two to go—

  Fingers dug into my hair, yanking me away from the dead woman and making me yelp. The second dwarf had finally gotten in on the action, and he pulled me up and then shoved me forward, mashing my face against the silverstone bars, as if he were trying to push my whole head through them. With one hand, he held me up against the bars. With the other, he slammed his fist into my back and kidneys over and over.

  Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

  The folks watching the fight hadn’t had much to cheer about up until this point, but they hooted and hollered with delight and surged up out of their chairs as the dwarf pinned me against the bars. Dobson got right up in my face on the other side of the metal.

  “How does it feel, Blanco?” he hissed, spittle spewing out of his lips. “Knowing that you’re going to die here tonight?”

  Instead of responding, I snaked one arm through the bars and grabbed his silk tie. Then I yanked him forward as hard as I could, making his head bang against the bars just like his nightstick had earlier and adding a third goose egg to the collection on his face. Dobson grunted and fell back on his ass, making the crowd howl even louder.

  I would have liked to have reached through the bars, latched onto Dobson’s ankle, and dragged him back in range so I could strangle him to death with his own tie, but there was the small matter of the dwarf and his continued pummeling of me.

  So I flung my right hand out to the side and reached for my magic. A second later, I had another Ice dagger clutched in my
fingers. I twirled the crude weapon around, brought it up, and then stabbed the dwarf in the thigh with it. He grunted, but he didn’t stop his assault.

  The dagger broke off in his leg, so I wrapped my hand around the jagged end and let loose with another round of Ice magic, this time blasting my cold, frosty power deep into the wound I’d opened up in his thigh—along with certain sensitive areas a bit higher up on his body.

  That was enough to get the dwarf to yelp and finally let go of me, since I’d just given him the worst case of frostbite ever. I whipped around and gouged my fingers into his eyes, adding to the pain already racking his body. The dwarf slapped at me, but his blows were wild, and his hands clattered off the bars instead of hitting me. Behind him, I could see the Fire elemental drawing her hand back, another ball of flames crackling in her palm. So I grabbed hold of the dwarf’s jumpsuit and pulled him close to me, ducking down behind his short body as best I could.

  The elemental’s Fire ball exploded against his back a second later.

  The dwarf screamed, and so did the folks who’d gathered behind me, as they ducked to get out of the way of the flames shooting through the gaps in the cell bars.

  The dwarf wasn’t quite dead, but he was close enough to it, so when the flames died down, I shoved his charred body away and stepped toward the elemental.

  Four down, one to go.

  The Fire elemental’s eyes narrowed as she stared at me, both of us moving step by step, going around the cell in a large circle. Finally, I stopped when I reached the back wall, standing right in front of the two toilets.

  “You don’t have anybody to hide behind now,” she hissed.

  “I don’t need anybody else,” I snarled back, throwing my hands out wide. “Take your best shot, bitch.”

  All around the cell, the crowd pressed forward on all sides, clutching the bars, sensing that this could finally be the end of me. Even Dobson had managed to get back on his feet, bang-bang-banging his nightstick on the bars in a steady drumbeat of encouragement. His screams for the Fire elemental to kill me right fucking now were among the loudest.